Sleepless in the Compound
by Kenzie.32
Summary: Peter suffers from nightmares. So does Tony. And maybe it's time Tony told someone about what happened in Siberia. Takes place after Homecoming, where Peter spends time with Tony at the Compound. Total Iron Dad/ Spider-Son fluff.


Peter opened his eyes with a gasp and began to familiarize himself with his surroundings. He was in a large bed, comforter pushed to the end from him moving in his sleep.

There was a desk with tech and toys stacked high, and his Spider-Man suit on top of chair. Peter breathed out in relief as he remembered he was staying the weekend in the compound. All had been going well, he got to work in the lab with Mr. Stark on upgrades for his web shooters and he played video games against Vision, who was surprisingly not good for having the internet in his head.

Rolling over, Peter remembered what had awoken him in the first place at… 3:29 AM according to his alarm clock. Another nightmare about Toomes' warehouse caving in on him, leaving him trapped.

Claustrophobia has become somewhat of an issue for Peter since the incident, and despite being in the large room Mr. Stark personalized for him, he couldn't seem to fully breathe. So rolling out of bed, he began to roam the halls until he came to the kitchen. Reaching into the fridge, Peter pulled out a pre-packaged cup of chocolate pudding. Chocolate before bed might cause nightmares, but the spiderling shrugged his shoulders, he was going to have nightmares either way.

Settling on the couch, Peter silently ate his pudding while wrapped up in a blanket, taking in the scene around him. The windows of the compound allowed him to see the lights outside that lit up the driveways and the gates. A few trees could be seen, as well as the faint outline of a parked quinjet further out in the compound's space.

Everything was quiet and peaceful, so much so that Peter didn't notice that someone else had entered the room until they plopped down on the couch next to him, prompting Peter to let out a yelp of surprise.

"Calm down, jeez, it's just me," Tony sighed with exasperation.

"Mr. Stark, what are you doing up?"

"Same as you, kid. And seriously, pudding? What are you, two?" Tony let out a chuckle as he began to much on a couple of Oreos.

Peter huffed. "Well sorry I don't feel like chewing right now. I'm tired."

"Yeah, speaking of that, why are you awake at..." the older man looked down at his watch, "3:50 in the morning?"

Peter finished the last bite of his pudding. "Can't sleep. Nightmares." He watched as Tony looked forward as he let out a sigh, a distant look in the mentor's eyes. "What about you, did you have a nightmare too?"

Tony looked at the kid. "When did you become so good at reading people?"

Peter shrugged. "Always have been," he responded coolly, placing the empty pudding cup on the tray beside him.

At that Tony let out a snort. "Yeah right, kid! Earlier today you almost cried asking me if I was mad at you when Dummy sprayed you with the fire extinguisher!"

"Well I'm sorry if I've never been attacked by a robot before! Besides, he got some of your paperwork."

"Needless to say kid, I wasn't mad. At you, at least." Tony thought in silence for a moment. Here was an impressionable kid who was set in his ways and wanted to be just like Iron Man (and the man underneath). Tony was responsible for him this weekend and had a stake of responsibility in his life from now on, so why not show the kid that it was okay to open up a bit, despite going against everything Tony had taught himself during his lifetime. "And yeah, nightmares keep me up too."

Peter was shocked by Tony's revelation, but tried to keep it off his face. Judging by the smirk Tony was giving him, Peter must not have been doing a good job at it. "Do you wanna talk about it? Talking about it helps."

"What are you, a psychiatrist now? Trying to provide free therapy?"

Peter shrugged again. "You pick up a thing or two when you go."

This caught Tony's attention. The kid went to therapy? "Since when are you going to therapy?"

Peter looked up towards his mentor, his big, brown eyes shining bright in the dimmed living room. "Well, Mr. Stark, when you lose three parents before you can take a driving test, you don't really get much of a choice. Not that I minded, I stopped going a few weeks before Germany." 

"Why'd you stop?" Tony was curious, and worried. What if this kid— _his kid_ —was suffering because he thought he had to be strong enough not to go, or if he was embarrassed.

"I felt better. I learned how to manage the grief and the guilt myself after learning to do so during my sessions. Plus, it's hard to try and explain how you feel when you're a 14-year-old kid who can catch a bus with his bare hands."

Tony laughed at that with relief. And then he was silent. "You really think it helps?"

Peter nodded enthusiastically, hoping to help Mr. Stark work through his issues like Tony had helped him with so many other things. "You can tell me about your nightmare and I'll tell you about mine."

Tony thought about it for a second, before hesitantly agreeing. "Okay. Well, I haven't told anyone about what happened in Siberia, not even Rhodey or Pepper, but that seems to be the focus of my dreams."

Peter's face scrunched in confusion. "Siberia? Like with Captain America?"

Tony flinched slightly, but he knew the kid noticed. "Yeah, exactly. When I had gotten there, I had realized that Rogers was telling the truth and that there was something funky going on at an abandoned HYDRA base. And so I entered planning to help him and Barnes. But then we found that the threat we thought we had to deal with had been neutralized, and there was this man in there with a screen and he showed us a video."

Peter nodded in encouragement, sensing his mentor's hesitance.

"The video was of Barnes killing my parents. When he was the Winter Soldier. And Rogers knew. He knew that it wasn't some accident, that it was HYDRA, that it was his friend, and he didn't tell me? And after that I just lost it, and I went after Barnes. May or may not have blasted that damn metal arm off. And then Rogers went ballistic on me, shoving his shield right through my arc reactor. And that's what I see every night. Except the shield doesn't just stop there in my dreams, it cuts me in half and then I wake up."

Tony was still staring forward after he finished, but when the silence got too much, he looked down at the kid beside him.

Peter was pale in his complexion, looking terrified with his expression out in space.

"Kid?"

"I used to look up to him. I used to wear Captain America pajamas when I was six. I was excited when they found him in the ice _alive_. I-I-I was a fan, I told him so, he was one of my role models, how…" Peter made eye contact with Tony, "how could he do that to you?"

"I've been trying to figure that out myself, kid, but sometimes we can't explain everything. And, I mean, I know that Barnes was under some control from HYDRA, but still, seeing my mom murdered… there was no way I could have kept my cool."

Peter scooted closer to Tony and rested his head against the side of Tony's shoulder. "Captain America is a stupid weenie head!" he grumbled.

Tony cackled at the statement. "Stupid weenie head? Seriously, are you five?"

"I'm tired! And he is one, so there's that."

Tony ran his fingers through the spiderling's hair, sensing that the kid was beginning to give into his fatigue at 4 AM. "Enough about me, what about your nightmares?"

Peter just huffed, letting his eye lids droop lower. "Just the building falling on me."

Tony perked up at this, stopping the motion of his fingers. "What? A building fell on you?"

"Yeah," Peter yawned, "when I ran away from Homecoming to stop Toomes."

Tony stared at the kid with a look of exasperation. "Well are you gonna share anything else about it?"

"Nah, I'm safe here." And with that, Peter curled further into Tony's side.

Tony smiled at the sentiment. He grabbed one of the throw blankets and placed it over the both of them. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., dim the lights."

"You got it, Boss," the A.I. replied, and the lights in the room dimmed to near darkness. Tony relaxed into the couch, resting his feet on the ottoman in front of him.

"Night, Dad," Peter whispered as he fell further into a peaceful sleep.

Tony was shocked, but decided to relish in the moment rather than concern himself with all the consequences that could come from him being Peter's father figure. "Night, kid."

And they both slept nightmare free.

Rhodey walked in later that morning followed Pepper, both surprised to still smell brewing coffee in an almost silent living area.

Pepper was about to ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. for Tony's whereabouts, ready to give him the low-down on the business trip she had just returned from, when Rhodey motioned to silence her while simultaneously pointing at the couch.

The soldier and the CEO cooed at the sight of Tony and Peter curled up on the couch, still dead to the world.

Pepper snapped a picture with her phone while Rhodey asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to close the blinds. Together, they walked back to the elevator to let the superhero duo sleep for just a little longer.

 **Let me know what you think! If you guys like it, I might do another one shot or chapter about Tony and Peter seeing Cap and the crew for the first time since Germany.**


End file.
